Proof ID Requirement At Polls is Good Idea: Dead Woman Gets Registration Card
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Marion Salter got her new voter’s registration card on Monday.
The Broward Supervisor of Elections mailed it to the wrong address.
The card should have been sent to Fred Hunter’s cemetery in Hollywood since Marion Salter has been dead and buried there for 17 months.
Salter getting a new registration card is why the requirement to present a picture ID before voting is a good idea.
Who knows how many other dead folks are getting new cards?
I only know one. Marion Salter was my mother.
When she died, I filed a change of address with the Post Office to have her mail sent to me.
A national mail service notified the supervisor of the change of address. Then the supervisor automatically changed my mother’s voter’s registration and sent her a new card at my address.
I’m not sure it is smart to send new cards to anybody who files a change of address. But I was more interested in why the Supervisor of Elections Office didn’t figure out my mother was dead? Or at least ask before sending a new card?
She died right here in Broward. Her obituary appeared in the Sun-Sentinel and the New York Times.
“We don’t remove anyone based on an obituary in the newspaper, says Mary Cooney, spokeswoman for the supervisor.
The supervisor would have caught on eventually, Cooney says. At some point, most likely after she hadn’t voted in awhile, the supervisor would have sent a letter confirming she was still around.
The bottom line — The ID requirement, although it has been controversial, is a bulwark against fraud.
Mistakes are made. Without the ID requirement, someone might have been able to vote with my mother’s registration card.
August 18th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Elections supervisor should be an administrative position appointed by the county administrator and not a politician originally appointed by Jeb Bush.
August 19th, 2009 at 5:04 am
For decades now, there’s been an on-going effort to get the dead to vote in Florida and I oppose that. The dead had their chance to vote when they were living. Now that they’re gone I think the vote should stay with the living. The dead had their chance, please support voting rights only for those that are alive.